Make Britain Fun Again

How our planning system harms our tourism, leisure and entertainment sectors

The dire nature of the United Kingdom’s planning system and its consequences are well documented. Given the array of vitally important areas that our planning regulations currently strangle from housing to energy to transport, it is perhaps understandable that its impact on what might be seen as more more ‘frivolous’ forms of development like arenas or theme parks can be overlooked in the general discourse.

However, just because development for entertainment purposes is not as crucial for national prosperity as building more houses or power lines, this does not mean that its problems should simply be ignored. Leisure and entertainment remains an important pillar of the UK economy and the country welcomed 38 million overseas visits in 2023, who collectively spent £31bn.

The strangling of the fun economy should therefore not be ignored. In fact, there is a reasonable case that the sort of development required to support the fun economy is likely to be even more negatively impacted by our planning system than more ‘standard’ forms of development. The discretionary nature of the system means that in order to get anything built, you need to convince an array of councillors, residents, statutory bodies and potentially even central government ministers - all of whom have the potential power to delay, modify or outright reject the proposal.

Convincing some of these actors can be next to impossible, even with the moral backing of arguments such as “let us build people homes” or “allow us to tackle climate change with this solar farm”. Now imagine trying to make your case to these same actors, but instead you are arguing for a new theme park, something that lacks the same emotional or moral (and therefore likely, political) weight of housing or energy. Add into the mix how leisure and entertainment facilities are primarily for the use of the (time poor) young, and a discretionary planning system tends to be weighted to the views of the (time rich) old, then it’s easy to see how hard it will be to get any fun economy development approved.

Once you appreciate this, you begin to notice this strangling of the fun economy everywhere. A recent viral video detailed the arbitrage opportunities created by how much cheaper Centre Parcs is on continental Europe than in the UK (€256 for 3 nights in February vs £679). As a result, it can often be cheaper for British families to visit a park in France or the Low Countries, even after the additional travel costs are taken into account.

These high prices and people willing to travel abroad suggests there is significant pent-up demand for Centre Parcs holidays in the UK. Unfortunately, our planning system has meant that supply has not been able to expand to meet that demand (and ultimately reduce prices). Centre Parcs currently operates 5 locations in the UK, responding to the aforementioned high demand, it announced plans for a 6th location in Sussex in 2021. Well connected via Gatwick Airport and the M23 Motorway, the proposed park had a large potential market across London and the South East. These plans were fought by local residents, the local council and environmentalists, eventually being dropped in 2023.

It’s a similar story when you look at hotels. Below are screen grabs from Trivago for York and Reims: two similarly sized, historic cathedral cities, for a stay over the same weekend in early April 2025. Notice that both cities have pricier options but there is virtually nothing in York under £100, compared to well over a dozen such options in Reims. The price mechanism is screaming that there is significant demand to visit York, but it is not able to be met in the notoriously NIMBY city. This situation has been further exacerbated by the government purchasing of hotel rooms for asylum seekers, restricting market supply and effectively setting a price floor, at which hotels can be reasonably assured of custom from the Home Office.

Not only do would-be tourists struggle to find somewhere to stay in Britain, but our inability to build sufficient airport capacity means they can struggle to even get into the country in the first place, with the struggles of Heathrow and Gatwick expansions, alongside our inability to increase railway capacity being well documented.

However, although lack of accommodation and transport capacity limits the ability of tourists to visit sites that already exist, our planning system is also increasingly giving people fewer reasons to even bother trying to visit in the first place. Of the Top 10 rated theme parks in England on TripAdvisor, all are at least 30 years old (and many are much older). Contrast that with the USA, where Central Florida alone has opened 10 new parks in the last 30 years (with another due this year). Attempts to build the London Resort in Kent eventually ended in 2023 after more than a decade of trying, including being blocked because the park might harm spiders.

As a result, the UK risks having its lunch eaten by countries who are willing to build modern, 21st century attractions that people want to go to. Consider one of Britain’s strongest cultural exports of the last 50 years: Harry Potter. There are 4 Harry Potter theme parks across the globe, but none of them are in the country where the story is actually set - instead all we can muster is a tour of the studio and tax-dodging magic tat shops. If we were serious about growth and exploiting this soft power then every day, thousands of tourists would board Hogwarts Express trains at King’s Cross, before being whisked up to the new Harry Potter resort in Hertfordshire, complete with a replica Hogwarts luxury hotel.

Indoor arenas are another area where the UK risks falling behind its competitors when it comes to available facilities. Although the US has always had a natural advantage in this area due to the popularity of basketball and ice-hockey, the contrast between the Las Vegas Sphere (5 years from initial proposal to opening) and its proposed London equivalent (5 years stuck in planning before eventual rejection) has highlighted how the UK risks missing out entirely on a new generation of concert and entertainment arenas. Greater London has only a single indoor venue with a capacity above 13,000, compared to five in the New York Metro Area and three in Phoenix. A lack of concert capacity, combined with government plans to effectively cap prices for tickets means there is a risk that major international touring acts will simply not visit the UK as much moving forward.

There is one notable exception that does still seem able to get new infrastructure delivered: football. Tottenham Hotspur, Everton and Manchester United are all in different stages of stadium redevelopment on a scale that it is difficult to imagine in many other contexts. Football clubs having a large, locally based, vocal constituency (their fans) who are willing to support redevelopment and place pressure on local officials to ensure it gets approved seems to be the key element that football has in its favour that other sectors do not. However, even here, the planning system still piles on costs and delays to building attempts. It took 12 years for Spurs to replace White Hart Lane, contrast this with the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, which took just 5.

These advantages of football in navigating the planning system also do not seem to translate across to other sports. Harlequins, Bath and Exeter rugby clubs have all attempted stadium expansions to increase their revenue in the recent past. None of these expansions have ended up happening and as a result, they make up three of the seven English Premiership clubs who are currently balance-sheet insolvent.

Overall, it’s a fairly bleak picture that ultimately risks the UK falling out of the top tier of destinations for a host of leisure and entertainment purposes. Given the time it takes to build venues and infrastructure like this, it is likely that things will get worse before they get better. The government’s announcements on planning reform including changes to judicial review and environmental regulations, if enacted will help. However, to speed things up in the short-term, the government should not be shy regarding the use of Special Development Orders to expedite proposals that are already in the pipeline but have been stuck in our planning system. The Chancellor’s support for the planned Universal Studios park in Bedford (which is expected to use an SDO) is therefore welcome and should provide a blueprint for other projects moving forward.